SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
dei
'Unabashed Fascism': Trump Executive Order Targets 'Improper Ideology' at Smithsonian
"First Trump removes any reference of diversity from the present—now he's trying to remove it from our history," wrote one Democratic lawmaker. "You cannot erase our past and you cannot stop us from fulfilling our future."
Mar 28, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump has elicited a fresh wave of anger after he signed an executive order on Thursday targeting exhibits or programs critical of the United States at the Smithsonian Institution, a sprawling network of largely free museums and Washington, D.C.'s National Zoo.
The order aims to prevent federal money from going to displays that "divide Americans based on race" or "promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with federal law and policy," as well as remove "improper ideology" from Smithsonian's museums, education centers, and research centers.
"This is unabashed fascism," wrote the journalist Lauren Wolfe on X on Thursday. Amy Rutenberg, a history professor at Iowa State University, wrote: "Last week, while visiting several Smithsonian museums, I kept wondering how long it would take for this administration to direct exhibits to be pulled. Not long, it turns out."
Another observer, journalist and founding editor of the outlet SpyTalk Jeff Stein,remarked that "Trump goes full-on Soviet with intent to scrub Smithsonian museums etc. of 'improper ideology.'"
The move highlights Trump's desire to reshape not only American politics, but cultural institutions too.
The order, which included an accompanying fact sheet, also directs U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to reinstate monuments, memorials, statues, and other properties that have been taken down or altered since the beginning of 2020 to "perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology."
The order also specifies that U.S. Vice President JD Vance—a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents—will be tasked with identifying and appointing Smithsonian board members "who are committed to advancing the celebration of America's extraordinary heritage and progress."
The executive order singles out specific museums, like the African American History and Culture, and a "forthcoming" American Women's History Museum plan to celebrate what the White House described as "the exploits of male athletes participating in women's sports."
"Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement, the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology," according to the executive order.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) connected Trump's targeting of Smithsonian to his administration's attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
"First Trump removes any reference of diversity from the present—now he's trying to remove it from our history. Let me be PERFECTLY clear—you cannot erase our past and you cannot stop us from fulfilling our future," she wrote on X on Thursday.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Why DEI Was Doomed to Fail
DEI’s fundamental contradiction was this: It argued that race is a social invention—a system created to control people by reducing complexity—yet it never suggested replacing it with a more holistic vision of justice.
Mar 09, 2025
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI, is collapsing—not just as a corporate initiative, but as an ideological framework.
In what seemed like a flash, it became a dominant force in American institutional life, embedded in HR departments, university policies, and media discourse. And now, just as quickly, it finds itself in retreat, with entire DEI offices being gutted across corporate and academic America.
President Donald Trump’s administration has aggressively targeted DEI, issuing executive orders to dismantle these programs across federal agencies. This federal rollback has emboldened Republican-led states to eliminate DEI efforts within public institutions. Meanwhile, MSNBC’s recent firing of Joy Reid, a vocal defender of DEI who embodied many of its most aggressive tendencies, signals a broader cultural shift.
If we want to build a politics that actually addresses racial injustice, we need an approach that is dynamic rather than static—one that acknowledges history without being trapped by it.
The right celebrates this as a victory over “woke ideology.” The left frames it as yet another example of backlash and white fragility. But these explanations fail to account for why DEI has unraveled so quickly.
The reality is that DEI was doomed to fail—not because the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion are unworthy, but because the framework built around them was structurally flawed.
DEI’s fundamental contradiction was this: It argued that race is a social invention—a system created to control people by reducing complexity—yet it never suggested replacing it.
Instead, it doubled down on racial categorization, reinforcing the very thing it claimed to challenge. This reification of race, rather than dismantling structures of oppression, helped sustain them, making DEI brittle and politically untenable.
For the left, the lesson here is crucial. If we don’t break out of the rigid, black-and-white thinking that DEI promoted, we will continue ceding ground to the right. The need to discuss race and identity remains vital, but it must be done in a way that opens space for complexity rather than reinforcing the very constructs that uphold division.
DEI’s fatal flaw is that it traps itself in a closed loop. It rightly argues that race is a historical construct—a tool of power designed to enforce hierarchy. Yet instead of pushing beyond this construct, it reinforces race as fixed and immutable. The result is an ideological contradiction: Race is framed as an arbitrary invention, yet treated as an unchanging, permanent reality.
James Baldwin exposed the hollowness of racial constructs decades ago. In “On Being ‘White’… and Other Lies,” he wrote: “The crisis of leadership in the white community is remarkable—and terrifying—because there is, in fact, no white community.”
Baldwin understood that whiteness, like all racial identities, was not a biological or cultural fact but a political invention—a shifting construct designed to serve power. Yet DEI never seriously engaged with this idea. It simply replaced one rigid racial hierarchy with another, treating whiteness as an unchanging position of privilege while treating other racial identities as fixed sites of oppression.
This rigidity meant that DEI operated as a closed system, reasserting racial categories rather than interrogating them. It failed to engage with race as a lived, historically contingent process—one shaped by history, class, and material conditions.
By doing this, DEI alienated people across the political spectrum. Many white people, even those who consider themselves progressive, felt that DEI erased any meaningful discussion of economic struggle or historical complexity within whiteness.
Meanwhile, many people of color found DEI’s racial framework superficial—offering corporate-friendly language about inclusion while doing little to address material inequalities. The framework functioned as a kind of racial accounting system, but it lacked a clear political vision for building solidarity.
Sheena Mason, a scholar of racial theory, has articulated the deeper flaw in this approach: “To undo racism, we have to undo our belief in race.”
This insight is crucial. If race itself is a construct designed to justify social stratification, then maintaining race as a primary framework for addressing inequality only reinforces the divisions we claim to want to overcome. Yet DEI never suggested dismantling the concept of race—it only sought to redistribute power within its existing framework.
This was a fatal mistake. Modern genetic science has definitively debunked the biological basis of race. There is more genetic diversity within so-called racial groups than between them. The racial categories that shape our politics and institutions are historical inventions, not natural facts.
Yet DEI, instead of leveraging this knowledge to transcend racial essentialism, entrenches race as the defining lens for justice. This approach not only deepens social division but also makes the left vulnerable to the right’s attacks.
By insisting on the permanence of racial categories, DEI created an ideological framework that could be easily caricatured as divisive and exclusionary—giving conservatives an easy target while failing to deliver meaningful change.
Racial discourse often eclipses broader discussions of material conditions, making it harder to address economic inequality in a meaningful way.
Patricia Hill Collins, a foundational thinker in intersectional theory, has observed that, “Race operates as such an overriding feature of African-American experience in the United States that it not only overshadows economic class relations for Blacks but obscures the significance of economic class within the United States in general.”
DEI’s fixation on race, detached from material conditions, contributed to this very problem. By prioritizing racial categorization over economic struggle, it often obscured the broader systems of inequality that shape American life.
This not only made class politics more difficult to articulate but also allowed racial identity to become a stand-in for structural critique—reinforcing an identity-based framework that often benefited elites more than the working class.
With DEI collapsing, the question becomes: What comes next? The right hopes this marks the end of racial discourse altogether. That cannot happen. Structural racism, economic exclusion, and historical injustice are still deeply embedded in American life. Ignoring the function of racism and racial categories plays into the hands of those who want to maintain both racial and economic inequality.
But we cannot simply replace DEI with another rigid, prepackaged framework that reproduces the same mistakes. If we want to build a politics that actually addresses racial injustice, we need an approach that is dynamic rather than static—one that acknowledges history without being trapped by it.
This means recognizing that racial categories are not timeless truths but historical constructions that have been shaped by economic, political, and social forces. It means rejecting the idea that people are permanently locked into racial identities that define their entire experience. And it means moving beyond an approach that focuses primarily on representation and inclusion toward one that addresses material conditions to redistribute power.
DEI’s failure provides an opportunity for the left to rethink how it engages with race and identity. We need to stop seeing race as an unchanging structure and start understanding it as something that can be transformed. Morgan Freeman put it bluntly in an interview, stating, “I don’t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.”
This is the kind of shift we need—one that integrates historical understanding rather than segregates it, one that moves past “race”—which we know doesn't exist—as a fixed identity category toward a broader, more holistic vision of justice.
The goal should not be to replace DEI with another top-down, bureaucratic approach, but to build a new paradigm that is open, flexible, and capable of fostering real solidarity.
If the left fails to do this, it will keep losing to the right. And if that happens, the backlash against DEI will not just be the end of a flawed initiative—it will be a major setback for the broader struggle for justice and equality.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Fueled by Anger at Trump and Corporate Greed, Economic Blackout Underway
"We have the power," said one supporter of the boycott. "We don't have to accept corporate monopolies. We don't have to live with corporate money corrupting our politics."
Feb 28, 2025
After hundreds of thousands of social media users in recent days shared posts calling for an economic blackout at major retail corporations on February 28, the boycott was underway Friday, with proponents saying the aim was to deliver a message about widespread anger over corporate greed "to corporate America directly."
"We have the power. We don't have to accept corporate monopolies. We don't have to live with corporate money corrupting our politics," said former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. "We don't have to accept more tax cuts for billionaires. We don't have to pay more of our hard-earned cash to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg or the other billionaire oligarchs."
The idea of the blackout originated with a self-described "mindfulness and meditation facilitator," John Schwartz, who urged consumers to join the push for "systemic change," emphasizing that the boycott was not targeting President Donald Trump, his billionaire adviser and benefactor Elon Musk, or a political party, as both Democratic and Republican leaders "have manipulated the economy and profited off the working class."
But Schwartz noted on his website for The People's Union USA, "a grassroots movement dedicated to economic resistance, government accountability, and corporate reform," that the group stands "firmly for equality and freedom for ALL people, regardless of race, gender, background, or identity. The idea that companies and institutions should abandon diversity and inclusivity is regressive and unacceptable."
The statement was an apparent reference to Trump's executive order threatening to open investigations into companies that do not dismantle initiatives aimed at promoting "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI). The order—and the decision by some companies including Target, Walmart, Amazon to roll back DEI programs—has been named by some participants in Friday's economic blackout as a reason to withhold their spending from the corporations.
"We don't have to reward corporations that have abandoned their DEI policies to align themselves with Trump's racist, homophobic, misogynistic agenda," said Reich. "We have choices."
"It is promising that people are responding to the current moment by showing their distrust of these corporations."
Schwartz's posts about the blackout on social media went viral in recent weeks, with 700,000 people sharing his Instagram post and the content generating 8.5 million total views.
The boycott has gained the attention of celebrities with wide followings including actor Mark Ruffalo and author Stephen King.
While one marketing expert, Anna Tuchman of Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, toldThe Associated Press that the boycott was unlikely to lead to "long-run sustained decreases in economic activity" that would impact the financial bottom line of Amazon, Target, Walmart, and other affected companies, she noted that the blackout could make an impact on daily sales.
"I think this is an opportunity for consumers to show that they have a voice on a single day," said Tuchman.
Based on information from a data company called Placer.ai, the one-day blackout is likely not the only action many shoppers have been taking.
During the week of February 10, according to the company, which uses phone location date to track visits to stores, foot traffic dropped at Target stores by 7.9% and at Walmart by 4.8%, while it increased by 4.8% at Costco locations; Costco has defended its DEI policies under the Trump administration.
Joseph Feldman of financial research firm Telsey Advisory Group told clients that recent data "shows a clear drop in traffic in late January into mid-February following [one] company's step back from DEI."
According to Schwartz's website, more economic blackouts—both wide-scale and those targeting specific corporations—are being planned for the coming weeks.
The People's Union USA called for an Amazon blackout, including Whole Foods, during the week of March 7; a boycott of Nestlé to protest water exploitation and child labor during the week of March 21; and 24-hour economic blackouts on March 28 and April 18.
In a separate push, labor unions led by the United Auto Workers have already begun preparing for a general strike on May 1, 2028—International Solidarity Day.
Friday's blackout comes on the heels of news that consumer confidence plummeted in February, likely leading some corporations to already have felt the impact of fewer shoppers. Analysts linked the drop in consumer spending to anxiety stemming from Trump's mass firing of federal workers and his threatened tariffs on imports from the European Union, Canada, and Mexico.
The video posted by Schwartz on Instagram recently rallied consumers by telling them that "corporations profit off of our labor while keeping wages low, banks steal billions through inflation and predatory policies, politicians accept bribes disguised as donations while ignoring the people."
"They have taken everything from us while convincing us we should be grateful of the scraps," said Schwartz. "And that ends now."
With enthusiasm and media coverage of the blackout spreading in recent days, Aaron Vansintjan, co-author of The Future Is Degrowth: A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism, toldThe Intercept that "people are getting a sense that they're ripped off, that they're being taken advantage of and exploited as consumers."
"It is promising that people are responding to the current moment by showing their distrust of these corporations," said Vansintjan, whose book calls for reducing consumption and production of fossil fuels, factory-farmed meat products, and other goods that harm the planet.
Vansintjan noted that consumers have power that is more limited than that of unionized workers and tenants, who can organize for fair wages, working conditions, and rent prices.
"It's hard to have an impact where you shop, because most of us don't actually have much of a choice in that," Vansintjan said.
Schwartz toldThe Washington Post: "We are the economy. We are the workforce."
Corporate retailers, he said, "benefit only because we get up every day and do what we do. If we stop, they have nothing, and it's time for them to accept that truth."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular